I’m tempted to say the value-added tax since our hopes of restraining the federal government will be greatly undermined if we give the buffoons in Washington a new source of revenue. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why Mitt Romney may be an ever greater long-term threat to American exceptionalism than Barack Obama.

But even though the VAT is fiscal poison, it’s not the most dangerous policy proposal.

At the top of my list is global taxation.

I wrote in 2010 about some of the awful global tax schemes being pushed by the United Nations. And I also noted that unrepentant statists such as George Soros are pimping for global taxation.

I even wrote a paper back in 2001 to explain why global taxes are such a bad idea.

The details of the tax don’t matter. It’s the principle.

A supra-national taxing authority inevitably would mean bigger government and more statism. As such, it doesn’t matter whether the new global tax is imposed on financial transactions, carbon emissions, tobacco, the Internet, munitions, foreign exchange, pollution permits, energy, or airline tickets.

And the statists are not giving up. Here are passages from a news report on their latest scheme.

…civil society leaders demanded a basic level of social security as they promoted a “social protection floor” at a preparatory forum for the Commission on Social Development, which began Feb. 1. The focus of the forum was “universal access to basic social protection and social services.” “No one should live below a certain income level,” stated Milos Koterec, President of the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. “Everyone should be able to access at least basic health services, primary education, housing, water, sanitation and other essential services.” These services were presented at the forum as basic human rights equal to the rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” The money to fund these services may come from a new world tax. “We will need a modest but long-term way to finance this transformation,” stated Jens Wandel, Deputy Director of the United Nations Development Program. “One idea which we could consider is a minimal financial transaction tax (of .005 percent). This will create $40 billion in revenue.” “It is absolutely essential to establish controls on capital movements and financial speculation,” said Ambassador Jorge Valero, the current Chairman of the Commission on Social Development. He called for “progressive policies of taxation” that would require “those who earn more to pay more taxes.” Valero’s speech to the forum focused on capitalism as the source of the world financial problems.

This is unfettered statism, class warfare, and redistributionism, which is what you might expect from proponents of global taxation. But the part that really stands out is the assertion that government should guarantee a “certain income level” with freebies for things such as healthcare and housing.

If this sounds familiar, you probably saw the post about Franklin Roosevelt’s authoritarian proposal for a “Second Bill of Rights” that would guarantee “rights” to jobs, recreation, housing, good health, and security.

Remember, though, that whenever a leftist asserts the right to be given something, that person simultaneously and necessarily is demanding a right to take from someone else. This is why I deliberately chose to call the proposal authoritarian.

But I’m digressing. Let’s get back to the issue of global taxation.

The most important thing to understand is that leftists want global taxation. To get the ball rolling, they’ll take any tax for any purpose. They simply want to get the camel’s nose under the tent.

Once the precedent of global taxation has been established, then it’s a relatively simple matter for politicians to augment the first levy with additional taxes. Perhaps the camel analogy would be more accurate if we referred to some other part of the animal and warned that taxpayers won’t be happy when they learn where it’s going to be inserted.

The bad news is that some American politicians already have endorsed this scheme, most notably Nancy Pelosi, the former Speaker of the House.

But the good news is that global taxation is a toxic issue, which means politicians who have to get votes from non-crazy people are very reluctant to support taxing powers for the United Nations or any other entity. President Obama, for instance, already has rejected some global tax proposals and his Administration has been resisting other European proposals for global taxation.

But don’t be deluded into thinking the White House actually is good on these issues. This is the Administration, after all, that avidly supports a scheme from an American-funded Paris-based bureaucracy that would result in something akin to an international tax organization. Same bad concept, but different approach.

Perhaps the greatest – and worst – example of President Obama’s UN-ing of America was his Federal Communications Commission (FCC)’s December 2010 illegal Network Neutrality Internet power grab.

The Administration going to these unlawful lengths to commandeer control of the ‘Net makes it a little more difficult to persuade international autocrats and dictators to leave alone their portions of the World Wide Web.

Or ours.

Which brings us to the United Nations.

Behold the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) – a wing of the UN. They will be in December convening to renegotiate the 24-year-old treaty that deals with international oversight of the Internet.

And it doesn’t look good (shocking, I know.)

A growing number of countries are pushing greater governmental control and management of the Web’s availability, financial model and infrastructure…

China and Russia support the effort, but so do non-Western U.S. allies such as Brazil, South Africa and India.

Fabulous.

Lest we forget: Time and time and time again all over the world, when people’s Internet access is blocked, it is governments – China, Syria, Iran, North Korea, members of the United Nations – doing the blocking.

These are governments that will now be voting to give themselves greater international Internet authority, including – especially – over us. Behold the (standard-issue) UN Anti-America card.

They believe the current (Internet) model is “dominated” by the U.S., and want to “take that control and power away.”

Here at home, this is a strange bedfellow issue.  The pro-Net Neutrality likes of Google, Facebook and Netflix will be standing alongside the pro-freedom forces in opposition to this global power grab.  Why?

(FCC Republican Commissioner Robert) McDowell said the treaty could open the door to allowing revenue-hungry national governments to charge Internet giants such as Google, Facebook and Amazon for their data traffic on a “per click” basis. The more website visitors those companies get, the more they pay.

The whiplash-inducing hypocrisy of the pro-Net Neutrality folks is striking, but there is a sort of consistency here. In both instances, they are in favor of they themselves not paying any more to do business, which is perfectly understandable. If only they didn’t muddy the waters by lobbying government(s) to impose extra costs on others – like the incredibly expensive Net Neutrality on Internet Service Providers (ISPs) – to avoid paying their “fair share.”

The argument against increasing UN Internet control is nearly identical to the anti-Net Neutrality argument: If it ain’t broke, don’t let government(s) try to “fix” it.

In 1988, when the treaty was signed, fewer than 100,000 people used the Internet, Mr. McDowell said. Shortly after it was privatized in 1995, that number jumped to 16 million users. As of this year, it is up to 2 billion users, with another 500,000 joining every day.

“This phenomenal growth was the direct result of governments keeping their hands off the Internet sphere and relying instead on a private-sector, multi-stakeholder Internet governance model to keep it thriving,” he said.

Mr. McDowell attributed the massive growth of the Internet to freedom.

“So the whole point is, the more it migrated away from government control, the more it blossomed,” he said.

It obviously ain’t broke – so what’s to fix?

As the late, great Soviet Union sufferer and transcender Alexandr Solzhenitsyn rightly pointed out:

It is not a United Nations Organization but a United Governments Organization where all governments stand equal; those which are freely elected, those imposed forcibly, and those which have seized power with weapons.

So why should America’s free speech, free market Xanadu Internet be subjected to United Governments control — governments that time and again have shut down their own domestic Internets?

It, of course, should not be, which is why this UN vote must come up short.

We have about a year. Let us make it so.

Chillin' at the ice hotel

As serious scientists pull back from the alarmist predictions of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and from the extreme policy pronouncements of left-wing lobby groups, the complex reality of climate is starting to emerge.

AFP reports today, “Global warming rate less than feared: study”:

High levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may have less of an impact on the rate of global warming than feared, a study said Thursday.

The authors of the study funded by the US National Science Foundation stressed that global warming is real, and that increases in atmospheric CO2, which has doubled from pre-industrial standards, will have multiple serious impacts.

But the more severe estimates, such as those put forth by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are unlikely, the researchers found in their study published in the journal Science….

Schmittner noted that many previous studies only looked at periods spanning from 1850 to today, thus not taking into account a fully integrated paleoclimate date on a global scale.

Critics of the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) have long argued that climate change alarmists have ignored inconvenient data. That is starting to change–and so are the predictions.

We now await Al Gore’s pronouncement that Science is a disreputable publication, AFP a corrupt wire service, and the National Science Foundation a haven of Holocaust denial.

CO2 is released not just by oceans when they warm (absorbed when they cool) or decaying plants, or people exhaling, but combusting “fossil fuels” like the coal, gas, and, in some places, oil used to create electricity. CO2 emissions generally correlate with economic prosperity–more on that, momentarily.

But there is even less to this absurdity than meets the eye. Here’s how the ClimateWire story opens:

UNITED NATIONS — Generating enough electricity to supply the 1.5 billion people on this planet who live without it does not necessarily have to add much carbon dioxide to the global mix, U.N. experts argued in their annual Human Development Index.

The report, released yesterday, takes on the nettlesome subject of how the world can help bring these billions, most of them impoverished and living in Africa, into the light. It argues that “providing basic energy services” could happen with a CO2 increase of only 0.8 percent.

The fear that adding this level of energy supply to world accounts would mean much higher carbon output is unfounded, said William Orme, of the U.N. Development Programme, during a press briefing here on the report.

“That’s false,” he said. “You can actually do all that without creating a 1 percent rise in carbon emissions.”

Think about that. According to a UN report — coincidentally timed in the run-up to talks next month on replacing the energy-rationing Kyoto Protocol — you can create electricity for just under a quarter of the world’s population without, per the UN, even a 1% increase in man’s marginal contribution to CO2! That’s called UN Math.

The first thing that jumps out to those of us trying to find a way to make this statement be true is this interpretation: “Basic energy services” is in the eye of the beholder, a beholder who has his, viewing the dramatically lesser basic needs of others. He who seeks what others have surely has a different perspective. So far, the Kyoto disaster has affirmed this.

And then there’s this interpretation, which actually is necessary in any reading of this claim. Once the lights go on, at some level, then no growth for you! You’ve got what we think you need, now shut up.

As stated, CO2 equates with economic activity, with the statistical hiccup of certain wealthy countries depending heavily on nuclear power for much of their prosperity, like France and, until very recently, Japan and Germany.

So here again we see the newly fashionable effort to redefine prosperity, writing out economic GDP in favor of a mishmash of statist ideals leaving despotic hellholes as supposedly happy little nirvanas compared to those of us who thought reducing drudgery, disease and premature death from brutish, nasty living was somehow a good thing.

As AEI’s Steve Hayward notes, one “typical example of popular wisdom is the Happy Planet Index, which ranks the ostensible ‘happiness’ of the United States at 150th out of 178 countries, chiefly on account of America’s carbon footprint.” Mmm.

Ignore for the moment the internal confusion of this ClimateWire paragraph (surely a typo, which seems to be the principal way they get things right), and catch the argument. “Still, the U.N. report says high living standards ‘need to be carbon-fueled and follow the examples of the richest countries.’ A high degree of fossil fuel consumption was not seen as improving a nation’s life expectancy or education level, for example.”

So guess what the UN has in store for them, while also working to rope us into agreeing to Kyoto-style rationing? The UN report suggests “off-grid renewable options.” Ah, yes, the old reliable — er, wait, unreliable, “intermittent” — wind and solar power. Remember, we didn’t say often or how long the lights would be on, did we?

Just behold those happy poor…er, representatives of noble cultures. So wise, educated in ways we wealthy people will never comprehend (such are the wages of carbon sin). They’ve got a light bulb now, and they can turn them on during the day when the sun shines to power it!

So, yes, UN, you can “provide electricity” to 1.5 billion people without even slightly increasing CO2 emissions.

That is, if you don’t mind turning down, and sometimes out, the lights of many others.

And possibly squirrels running on wheels in their cages. Lots of them. And pedal-power. Hey, you need to get in shape anyway.

I mean, there are many ways this could be true. Yet, under any reading, why would we place this responsibility in the hands of, or even anywhere near, a group of people who believe in energy scarcity, not abundance?

We’ve already got such a crew in charge, here, and look at the swell direction things are headed.

The popular press is lauding liberal Democrats for having finally found their own voice in the Occupy Wall Street protests. And Missouri’s Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill, did not even show up for President Obama’s (who polls below 30% in MO) fundraiser in St. Louis. And a rumor is circulating that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has told Obama he cannot win passage of the jobs bill as proposed and will only take it in pieces to the Senate floor, thus distancing himself from the President.

Does anyone need to know anything else about the 2012 elections?

The problem for decades in Washington has been that lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, have spent their way to political success. Now that there is no more money, nobody knows what to do.  In fact, there is only one Congressman, Darrell Issa (R-CA) who has started (not inherited) a successful company that sold a product and wasn’t just in the service industry, law, accounting, insurance, medicine, banking, you get the idea.  The genesis of American capitalism is an agrarian society taking the risks necessary to make something from nothing and selling it.  He is likely the only one that has made the sacrifices necessary to build something from nothing, and make a profit.  The concept is that without actual profit you can’t spend money.  Everyone else, Democrat and Republican more resembles the Occupy Wall Street group who want to tell everyone where money should be spent, decisions based on personal interests and taxes, not capitalism.  The situation is exacerbated by the contempt and lack of cooperation between the congressional parties, as well as between members of Congress of both parties and the executive.

For some time, the question of when that animosity began has gone unanswered. Certainly there have always been hard-fought ideological battles in the halls of government. But there have also been famous relationships between party leaders, relationships that helped bring these leaders and the country together. When did our modern politics deteriorate so much? Recently a longtime friend and Washington insider suggested that it began with the defeat of the nomination of Judge Robert Bork, the highly respected and superbly qualified candidate, for the Supreme Court.

Within 45 minutes of the nomination’s announcement, the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) took to the Senate floor with a strong condemnation of Bork. In a nationally televised speech, Kennedy declared, “Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens.”

This was closely followed by the so-called Biden Report (that’s right, our Vice President and then-Head of the Senate Judiciary Committee). Bork later said in his best-selling book The Tempting of America that the report “so thoroughly misrepresented a plain record that it easily qualifies as world class in the category of scurrility.” For the next several months it was very ugly. When Judge Bork was finally defeated, the Republicans had blood in their eyes for payback.

It has been going on like that ever since. They killed one of ours, so we killed two of theirs, so they killed four of ours, and we killed eight of theirs, etc. The political killing has been going on now for so many decades, just like the Middle East, nobody can remember who started what and nobody trusts anyone in the other tribe. We “ordinary people” just keep getting kicked around by both parties.

Other countries would send in their military or ask the UN or USA to send theirs, but in the best tradition of what makes America great, the people have risen up, emulating our ancestors, and formed their own militia. Without arms but loaded with a healthy belief in America, the Tea Party is here to stay, and it is no wonder the political establishment is afraid.

It is worth noting that while Washington continues its dysfunctional behavior, city and state governments are starting to act responsibly. This has happened in spite of party divisions. That success is a reflection of just how strong the people in this country are. Very plainly, the cure from our woes will come from the American people on a local level, not the federal bureaucrats.

And yet, in spite of the accomplishments, the level of the Tea Party’s disgust with Washington politicians is a real reason for concern. I am not suggesting that some national politicians don’t deserve contempt, but I am concerned that injudicious expressions of anger may be our undoing, as it was in the 2010 Nevada Senate race. Somehow we have to find politicians with new answers. We need men and women who will unite the people, just as Ronald Reagan did with his Big Tent.

In a recent article discussing his hope for Governor Christie announcing his candidacy for President, Clark S. Judge, a speechwriter for Presidents Reagan and Bush, discusses how important it is to find a candidate who will embrace and energize the three legs of our electorate coalition — voters who give priority to economics, those most concerned about social issues and those who focus on national security . The article is worth reading and thinking about.

I hope the Democrats have found their voice in the Occupy Wall Street protests. I am happy with the voice of the Tea Party and hope we can find a candidate who will unite the people around sound principles. Sound principles mean economics based on capitalism, national security based on “don’t f__k with us”, and compassionate social policies that help people who can’t help themselves and people down on their luck but that do not support them forever.

In the document they make reference to the Earth Charter, which is purported to be “an ethical framework for a more just, sustainable and peaceful world”.

They understand that their “green” initiative has not progressed as quickly as they had hoped it would.  Cap and trade schemes that involve redistribution of wealth from developed countries to developing countries based on a market price on carbon dioxide emissions have not generated sufficient revenue.  A new or additional economic or market solution should be implemented, because humankind has transgressed against nature.  Humans have been treating nature as a commodity.  The “loss of biodiversity,  desertification, climate change and the disruption of a number of natural cycles are among the costs of our disregard for nature and the integrity of its ecosystems and life-supporting processes.  As recent scientific work suggests, a number of planetary boundaries are being transgressed and others risk being so in a business-as-usual world”,  according to the U.N. Secretary General’s report to the U.N. on Harmony with Nature.

Their proposal is to create a new world organization, naming it  the World Environmental Organisation (WEO) which will have a global legitimacy and mandate to have jurisdiction over what are considered the “common goods”, defined as “fresh water, healthy soil and clean air, but also the oceans, the atmosphere and diversity of life” since it would be difficult to implement or trade on these “common goods” that are not privately owned or traded on markets.

This document states “Our proposed WEO should be mandated with a trusteeship function over global public goals and common goods”.  Much like a legal guardian is appointed in the case of a person who is unable to represent him/ herself, such as an infant, insane or senile person, they are proposing such a legal guardian to represent and give “legal voice for the otherwise voiceless environment”.

For the WEO to have global legitimacy it will have to be widely democratic, representative and participatory by all members of the United Nations.

They intend to focus on the participation of the estimated 1.9 billion youths of the world, and their access to various forms of media, to implement these goals for the management and equitable distribution of these “common goods”.  The education of our children is being advanced by the International Baccalaureate Programmes, with the stated goal of creating good global citizens, as explained in a previous article Is the International Baccalaureate Programme Co-opting Your Child?

To fund this fair and equitable distribution of wealth they are proposing a “Global Commons Trust Fund” that would impose a tax or levy on any person or entity that uses a “global common”.   Finally, to raise additional revenue they also propose a global tax on financial transactions.  Below is a video of Richard Trumka speaking to the European Socialist Party last year about his support of a “Robin Hood” tax.

The United Nations is intent on utilizing social, environmental and economic justice to exact taxes or levies on the water we drink, the air that we breathe, and the rivers, lakes, streams, seas and oceans in which we fish or upon which we navigate.  In the context of this current draft from the United Nations, it might be interesting to re-read a previous article on Executive Order 13547.  This is all fitting together quite too neatly.

We must impress upon our representatives, elected or appointed, to withdraw from the United Nations immediately.  American’s must wake up to this imminent threat to our freedom and security, in fact to our very existence.  If we go down, the world will soon follow.  I fear this is the true intent of the Rio + 20 Conference.

The road to Rio is America’s road to ruin!

The information in their press release conveyed the urgency of the U. N. to get this moving forward with solid agreements reached by the November/December conference. The text in this press release is so extremely important for all of us to understand that paragraphs have been copied verbatim.

“Governments have a responsibility this year to take the next essential step in the battle against climate change, said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres.  How governments achieve the next essential step is up to them.  But it’s politically possible.  In Cancun, the job of governments is to turn the politically possible into the politically irreversible, she said.” (Bolded by Writer)

“Christiana Figueres pointed to the opportunity to capture the promises, pledges and progress that governments have already made, in accountable and binding ways.  According to Ms. Figueres, governments now need to resolve what to do with their public pledges to cut emissions.  All industrialized countries have made public pledges to cut emissions by 2020 and 38 developing countries have submitted plans to limit their emissions growth.”

“This needs to be captured in internationally agreed form, the U.N.’s top climate change official said.  More stringent actions to reduce emissions cannot be much longer postponed and industrial nations must lead, she added.”

“Ms. Figueres pointed out that governments agree to a comprehensive set of ways and means to allow developing countries to take concrete climate action.”

“This includes adapting to climate change, limiting emissions growth; providing adequate finance; boosting the use of clean technology; promoting sustainable forestry; and building up the skills and capacity to do all this.”

A brief history of the UNFCCC – With 194 Parties, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has near universal membership and is the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.  The Kyoto Protocol has been ratified by 190 of the UNFCCC Parties.  Under the Protocol, 37 States, consisting of highly industrialized countries and countries undergoing the process of transition to a market economy, have legally binding emission limitation and reduction commitments.  The ultimate objective of both treaties is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that will prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system.”

“Industrialized countries further pledged to find ways and means to raise 100 billion dollars a year, by 2020.”

Although the United States has never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, at the 2009 Climate Conference in Copenhagen (COP 15), U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged that developed countries would mobilize $100 billion by 2020 from both public and private sources for climate mitigation and adaptation in the developing world.  The list of countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol may be viewed here.

The global mission for Sustainable Development has found a home and is being pursued in many if not all of the Administration’s Cabinet Departments, particularly within the United States Department of Agriculture and the Environmental Protection Agency.

During his administration, President Obama has signed several executive orders that are creating massive bureaucracies to further our observance, in lieu of ratification, of the treaty.  Executive Order 13547: Stewardship of the Ocean, Our Coasts and Great Lakes was covered under a previous article. This Executive Order can be tied directly to Agenda  21:

Chapter 17.1 – PROTECTION OF THE OCEANS, ALL KINDS OF SEAS, INCLUDING ENCLOSED AND SEMI-ENCLOSED SEAS AND COASTAL AREAS AND THE PROTECTION RATIONAL USE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THEIR LIVING RESOURCES . In addition, this executive order clearly states its intent of “pursuing the United States’ accession to the Law of the Sea Convention.”

Executive Order 13575 was signed in June creating a White House Rural Council. The intent of this Executive Order is also to enact policy directly related to   Agenda 21 : Chapter 14.1 – Promoting Sustainable Agriculture and Rural Development.

This video from a Fox News report details the government expansion of control of our food, fiber and energy production in our vast rural areas through this executive order.

They are not wasting any time.  A press release dated August 8, 2011 from the EPA announced EPA and USDA Create a Partnership to Improve Drinking Water Systems and Develop Workforce in Rural Communities that states “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) today announced a national partnership to protect Americans’ health by improving rural drinking water and wastewater systems.”

The twenty year anniversary of the Rio Summit, Rio + 20, will be held June 4 -6, 2012 in Brazil.  There are a lot of people in our government working very hard to make sure that the United States has made substantial progress in meeting its commitments to the world.

This is the reason for the massive funds being allocated for “green jobs” and “renewable energy”,  high speed and light rail, and shovel ready infrastructure jobs.  This is why we are sending so much money to countries to help “nation build” and promote smart growth and smart power.